put the bee on
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English
[edit]Etymology
[edit](This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Is it from the initial B of "beat" and "borrow"?”)
Pronunciation
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Verb
[edit]put the bee on (third-person singular simple present puts the bee on, present participle putting the bee on, simple past and past participle put the bee on)
- (slang, transitive, chiefly US) To finish off; to beat.
- 2001, Travis Beal Jacobs, Eisenhower at Columbia, Transaction, page 152:
- When Carmen quipped in, “Well, Mr. President somebody has to put the bee on them,” the General asserted, “It won't be me, never.”
- (slang, transitive, chiefly US) To beg from; to borrow money from.
- 1938, Clifford Robe Shaw, Henry Donald McKay, “et al.”, in Brothers in Crime, University of Chicago, page 157:
- Sometimes I'd see a woman in the backyard, and, if she had a kind face I'd put the bee on her.
- 1945, John Steinbeck, Cannery Row:
- I don’t want to be the kind of a guy that would take advantage of him. You know one time I put the bee on him for a buck.